Introducing HR3.0
photo by mysza831
RoundPegg was mentioned on NPR’s Marketplace program last week talking about HR3.0 in the context of the hiring process. (Disclaimer: we may very well have made up the term.)
Despite that, we fervently believe in the idea behind it and want to define it a little more detail.
HR3.0 introduces transparency to the job search/hiring process.
Even with more of the hiring process moving online, we are only just now beginning to catch up with where the process was in the offline world 15 years ago.
That’s not to say the digitization and transition online hasn’t improved the process some. But it’s mainly recreated what’s already existed into 1s and 0s and improved things at the margins (see after the jump for a brief history of the online job industry).
HR3.0 marks the day when the power of the Internet is brought to bear to actually do things that were difficult, if not impossible, to do in the offline world. HR3.0 starts the process of changing the game.
At its core, it is about transparency.
Transparency to ultimately figure out whether you can work successfully within a company or whether a job candidate will return you a positive ROI.
That includes peppering who you know and their contacts for information on working at a company or peppering shared contacts to get the real scoop on a candidate. It also means having the ability to drill deep into a company’s real culture or a team’s sub-culture or drilling into whether a candidate will be able to work well with a team.
Changing jobs/hiring is a massive commitment and one where the deal is typically sealed after a three dates. If a job seeker makes the wrong decision the downstream effects could derail the individual’s career path for a couple of years. And a bad hire costs a company a ton of money (~150% of compensation) and has ripple effects throughout the team.
The commitment for both sides though is largely psychic though. Will a new hire ruin a team’s chemistry? Will a new gig and manager make your life miserable? Team politics (used neutrally – every team has them) can be crushing for a new individual who doesn’t quite fit.
Being able to put more of that work-style information in the hands of the players involved means better decision-making (usually).
LinkedIn and apps like BranchOut have made it much easier to be proactive in the process. It’s much easier to collect information about potential managers and candidates alike to begin painting the picture of what working together may be like.
We at RoundPegg are taking an exhaustive, objective approach to help companies understand their culture and who best fits while GlassDoor has started on the other end and offers candidates a peek behind the wizard’s curtain.
Ultimately it all paints a better picture of whether the grass really is greener. Calling provided references is a joke and asking your uncle’s college roommate what it’s like to work at GloboCorp is a silly, invalid data point of one.
The Internet is helping reveal the true drivers of workplace success and providing both sides the opportunity to do things differently (and better).
Welcome to HR3.0. This is just the beginning. It’s going to get really damn exciting especially when these approaches start to converge.
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The New Competitive Advantage
The more research I do on the topic the more I wonder why business leaders aren’t spending 80% of their day thinking about this.
In the evolving ‘knowledge economy,’ loosely defined as those industries upon which physical outputs are scarce (e.g. tech, consulting) the only competitive advantage you have is the creativity and the innovation of your employees.
And employees are only creative and innovative when they are engaged. Gallup’s studies show only 29% are engaged with their work. Less than one in three! If there is a more damning statistic to the job our business ‘leaders’ are doing I don’t know it.
No time like the present to start. Put down the Blackberry, back away from the powerpoint deck and get some real work done by turning your attention to you most important constituents.
Get to know your employees. Understand what motivates them. Listen to their goals. Put their strengths to work. Eliminate the distractions caused by all the petty nonsense and let them focus on what really matters and what they’re most excited about.
Setting High Expectations Of Non-Performance
Most jobs don’t have a linear relationship between time and output. We all pay lip service to recharging and getting away, but as a nation we don’t practice it well at all.
Whether it’s figuring out how to do a task more efficiently or thinking of a new way to position a product, creativity is at the core. Every department requires creativity (after all, they don’t call it creative accounting for nothing). Stress is the biggest inhibitor of creativity. And without creativity our companies lose their competitive advantage.
How do we minimize stress? Set the right expectations for your team by setting the non-performance bar high. Unplug.
- Don’t send emails after dinner. (Prerequisite: eat dinner at a reasonable time.) If you’re on 24-hours a day, your employees will believe they are expected to be also. Tune out every night. It’s good for you; it’s good for them.
- Don’t call your team members on their cell phones. Unless the building is on fire or you’re about to have a meeting with a member of Congress your question or thought can wait until morning.
- Don’t count vacation days, unless they aren’t being used. If you’re team works hard and gets their work done then a few bonus days here and there don’t matter. But make sure that vacation is being taken. Not a day here or there, but extended periods.
- Carve out free time. Don’t squeeze every minute out of your team’s day. Ask people to share interesting articles they’ve read with the team, for example. A half-hour here and there to think or read about things you enjoy doing instead of what you have to do will spill over into new ideas.
- Reward creative thinking, not time invested. Encourage your people to work smarter, not longer. Ideas may come in the off hours, but it’s the idea that should get recognized rather than when someone is sitting in their chair.
Sometimes less really is more.
Web2.0 and the Decline of Civilization
Just finished reading a great post from Neil Robertson about the changing tide of editorialization of the web and an idea he has to solve it. It was great because I’m so incredibly over the Web2.0 movement. Done. Finished. Sayonara bitches. But his post got me thinking about all we’ve gotten from the Web2.0 revolution.
First, an acknowledgment that Web2.0 is a stepping stone. A necessary evil. The future is brighter and the Internet will change our lives for the better (more on that in a future post). In the meantime, we’re suffering the consequences.
Web2.0′s wonderful gifts:
- The utter loss of intelligent content
- Extremist discourse
- Loss of real-life connectedness
The Loss of Intelligent Content to Consume
The most destructive piece of Web2.0 is user generated content (UGC). UGC is driving us ever more quickly down the road of becoming dumber and lazier.
From the publisher side, Web2.0 is laziness in action. It removes the writer and editor (read: overhead and content quantity constraints) from the process and ensures that rather than producing one good story or article a day, tens of thousands can be produced. This was a big deal at Yahoo! before I left…and still is. But editing, filtering and surfacing the good stuff was rarely considered.
Laziness never wins in the end (see: the hare).
With the exception of the top half of 1% of blogs, UGC makes us dumber. We’re fascinated by lip-syncing fat kids in front of webcams or by Justine Average’s lifestreaming. We’ve found the Lowest Common Denominator.
This has a Reagan-esque trickle-down effect. More of our media consumption is happening online and the other outlets are struggling to keep pace. What happens? The 5:00 news is essentially Entertainment Tonight read by someone with a deeper voice. Reality shows. Singing/dancing shows. Game shows where the only skill is knowing how to pronounce the number on the front of the suitcase. Really?
Filters are gone. Sex, babies, dogs and sex sell. Why try anything else?
Am I an old crumudgeon already? Am I an elitist?
I long for the days of G.I. Joe telling me a story with a moral. After all, “…knowing is half the battle.”
Extremist Discourse
Being able to share your opinions (yes, like I am) without regard to your audience creates more radical views. Face to face communication is gone. No longer do have have to actually listen to other viewpoints. After all, UGC is all about me spewing my thoughts on a page like verbal diarrhea. It’s me ‘speaking,’ rather than listening.
And if I don’t have to listen or suffer the consequences of having a viewpoint that doesn’t fall within our societal norms then what’s to stop me from believing that I’m off course?
In order to get noticed through the noise you have to be different. Or extreme. You have to have an opinion that gets people fired up.
If not, what’s the point of contributing?
For example, the video of the guy on a cubicle rampage has been passed along to me several times today. If he was just angrily packing his papers into his briefcase and muttering under his breath would it be a ‘hit?’
Loss of Connectedness
We think we’re more connected these days. I have 279 connections on LinkedIn and nearly as many friends on Facebook. Look how popular I am!
But reading a newsfeed, seeing status updates and reading tweets doesn’t make me any closer to my friends. Yes, I know what they’re up to but this is a poor substitute for actually living in real life.
I’m hopelessly addicted to the Internet so this isn’t a rant about the time we spend online. But the Internet gives me the feeling of connectedness without the connectedness itself. A far worse crime in my book.
We’re missing out on the shared experiences that form strong bonds. Going to the movies isn’t the same as sharing YouTube videos because there is a lot more conversation and context around our theatrical adventure.
A whole generation is growing up thinking that a 140 character message that leads with “[your name] is…” is the same as actually talking to their friend.
Looking Ahead
So what’s it all mean? Like the 2004 Presidential election there isn’t much we can do about it now. But we can look ahead and make sure we don’t repeat the mistakes we’re living through today. More on that later…
